


Oats in the Water

by Charmian



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-03
Updated: 2019-02-17
Packaged: 2019-10-21 20:06:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17649032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Charmian/pseuds/Charmian
Summary: The men beat Crozier on the way back to camp. Goodsir postpones his plans until Crozier's well. Everything else goes the same, except not. (Eventual Crozier/Goodsir, but it's going to be a long time coming.)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Title from the Ben Howard song, because I'm basic like that. This was originally going to be for the Crozier/Goodsir kink meme prompt, but it's taking way too long. Sorry!
> 
> (Thank you to D. for the scenario help, and for being so dang encouraging.)

Francis wakes in an unfamiliar camp. In a tent. In a sledge. There’s blood in his eyes. It’s morning, it’s twilight; he smells meat cooking. Mr. Hickey, then Doctor Goodsir, then the men, the beast, shots and the sound of boat chain rattling over shale.  
  
One long beat when he’s upended and weightless, twisting in the wind like sail cut from its spars.  
  
Then he hits the ground and rolls and —  
  
—  
  
It’s Doctor Goodsir again. His face swims into focus, worried and worse for wear. His cheek is covered in fresh abrasions; one eye is dark and swollen nearly shut.  
  
“Captain Crozier,” he says, “Would you like some water?”  
  
Francis considers the question for perhaps longer than he ought. He feels like he’s been caught in a vicious rip tide; like he’s coming up for air, no longer certain of where he’s been dragged. Everything _hurts_. He licks his lips, and tastes dried blood.    
  
“Yes. Please,” he croaks finally. This earns an encouraging smile from Doctor Goodsir. He places a flask in Francis’s hand, bracing his palm between Francis’s scapula as he gently levers him up.  
  
Francis groans, as much from stiffness as pain. But the water is cold and fresh, and he drains the flask. He makes to pass it back to Goodsir and stops short — belatedly realizing Goodsir’s other hand lays inert at his sternum in a sling. He frowns. For the first time, Francis shifts his focus past the doctor, into the deeper shadows of the tent, straining for the sounds of other men shifting in their sick beds.  
  
“How many others?” he asks. Francis sinks back into the pillow as Goodsir withdraws. He tilts his head in question, so Francis clarifies: “How many other men are under your care?”  
  
“Ah. Just you, captain,” he says softly.  
  
“And the ones that survived, they’ve — ?”  
  
Run off? Returned to Edward? Are they, in fact, at his own camp now? Francis looks over Goodsir’s shoulder expectantly, and Goodsir follows his gaze. After a long moment he turns back. He seems very, very tired.  
  
“It’s just you, captain,” he repeats.


	2. Chapter 2

His last coherent memory is the sun behind their heads as they beat him. A halo, golden-bright, their faces eclipsed by shadow.  
  
Thomas Armitage. Charles Des Voeux. Robert Golding, not yet twenty. Try as he might, Francis finds he cannot muster ill-will toward them. He wonders if Goodsir saw how they died. If he left them to rot where they fell.  
  
Catching the doctor’s eye as he palpates down the bare, bruised skin of his midsection, Francis opens his mouth to ask — well, a barrage of questions, likely, though all variations on the same refrain of _what happened?_ — but Goodsir pauses, distracted, and shifts his fingertips to apply deeper pressure. Pain lances through Francis’s side. He recoils with an curse, breathing hard, sweating and clammy all at once. Peevishly, he swats away the doctor’s hand. Goodsir places it on his shoulder.  
  
“Steady, now.” He draws the hem of the shirt down. Francis grunts; then, a tight, irritable nod. The doctor seems unperturbed. “You ought to rest,” he says, and without waiting for agreement, he gives Francis’s shoulder a kindly pat before turning and shuffling from the tent. The flap catches the wind in his wake. It reveals only darkness.  
  
Briefly, Francis considers recalling him with a shout.  
  
Perhaps, though, he has gone to attend to matters outside of the narrow purview afforded to Francis in this tent. If there are no survivors, it stands to reason that Doctor Goodsir may have dragged him the short distance back to Mr. Hickey’s camp. Francis can recall very little of its character; he remembers a long table fashioned of decking, and Mr. Hickey at its head, his hair vivid in the afternoon light. After that, he remembers Doctor Goodsir wiping the grime from his cheek, and how his eyes were drawn to the pinpricks of blood at the doctor’s hairline.  
  
They’ve become a common enough sight not to alarm him. But such is the untethered nature of his reflections that his mind drifts further back, and —  
  
The memory of James in extremis hits him with the force of a blow; there’s a spasm of real, tangible pain as his insides contract in self-protection. As hazy as his impression is of the past few days is, James’s last moments are rendered in his memory with exquisite, brutal clarity. Francis can see his hand on James’s throat, feel the heat of him in the pads of his fingers. He thinks he ought to have looked him in the eye as he coaxed his muscles to accept the fatal dose — it seems only right — but he has no memory of this. Instead, he remembers James’s hand, like a dead thing clasped in his. Shifting his grip, so his fingers twined through James’s.    
  
There is a rising desperation in his memory that James should not be cold in his final hour. Which was, of course, a foolish thing — he has been present at enough vigils to know fingers go blue as the breath comes thick and clotted — but as panic set in, the finality of his actions collided with the shortness of time and his need to _do something_ , so he rubbed James’s hand between his own, flushing some blood back under the skin while the tears rolled from his chin in fat, ugly drops. _You deserve better than this_ , he wanted to say, _you deserve more than me_ , but all he could manage was a whisper, a hiccup between sobs: _I’m so sorry._  
  
With obvious effort, James shifted his gaze from some unknowable horizon, and fixed it on Francis. One side of his mouth crooked up. Weakly, James’s fingers squeezed against his own.  
  
When the men asked later, Francis told them it had been quick and neat, and that James acquitted himself beautifully in the end, but the truth was — he was a long time dying. He lingered impossibly, then mindlessly, his eyes rolling and breathing ragged until Francis’s exhaustion overrode his anxiety and he simply wanted it to be over.  
  
The shame of that — of his selfish desire to deny James even one second longer — lodges like a blade next to his heart. Sometimes it makes it difficult to breathe.  
  
Of all his failures, this, absurdly, feels the most egregious. And while he no longer craves the burn of the whiskey, he aches to be back among the men, pulling hard with the wind on his cheeks, so at least he might be numb to it again.  
  
The lantern gutters; the flap of the tent draws back, and Lady Silence slips in.  
  
A small noise escapes Francis. She straightens, looking him up and down. It would seem that they are both caught by surprise.  
  
“ _Hello_ ,” he says in her language, when he recovers his wits enough to recall the word.  
  
She dips her head in greeting and settles shyly on the stool Doctor Goodsir left. It seems she did not expect to find him awake.  
  
“ _I am happy to see you again_ ,” he says, trying to set her at ease, but finds he means it whole-heartedly. She is healthy and hale and there is color in her cheeks. She looks like everything his men are not, he is not, and at this moment, he is profoundly glad for it. The sincerity of his sentiment must show in his face, because she relaxes, then gives a small smile.  
  
“ _Where is Doctor Goodsir?_ ”  
  
She pauses in untying a bag and drops her head to her shoulder, miming sleeping. 

"Ah," he says, and she resumes her work, withdrawing a block of seal meat from the bag. Next comes the crescent-shaped knife from a pocket. She slices a piece and passes it to him.  
  
“ _Thank you_ ,” he says, chewing thoughtfully. Perhaps she will answer his questions, if he is careful in his phrasing. “ _How many people here? You, me, Doctor Goodsir?_ ”  
  
She nods.  
  
“ _More?_ ”  
  
She shakes her head.  
  
“ _We are here how many days?_ ” he asks.  
  
She holds up two fingers.  
  
Two days, plus the hours (days?) that elapsed he was at Mr. Hickey’s mercy. Long past the time he would have expected to see Edward.  
  
“ _The other men — you see them?_ ”  
  
She begins to shake her head, but stops short. She lays the knife on her lap, considering. After a beat, she holds up one hand, flat and open. Walking her fingers across her palm, she pauses, and points to the place where her fingers stood. Taps it for emphasis.  
  
“ _Tracks?_ ” he asks, and she nods. “ _You saw tracks?_ ”  
  
She nods again. Before the memory of the sun behind the boys’ heads as they kicked him, there is Edward, agreeing to lead the men in his absence, agreeing to live. Francis swallows thickly.  
  
“ _South?_ ”  
  
She nods again. So Edward took him at his word after all.  
  
—  
  
In two days time, he’s strong enough to take his first wobbly steps around the tent, supported by Doctor Goodsir. The next day, he commits to a shambling circuit around the tent before the doctor arrives.  
  
“A fine morning constitutional,” he exclaims in satisfaction to no one in particular.  
  
For the next few days, this track around the tent becomes an obsession. It’s agonizing and exhausting, but it does him good to be back on his feet again. He develops a series of landmarks to guide him — the stool first, then the long edge of a table, then a rest against its side, followed by a few feet of open air, and the inevitable thump of his shin into a trunk near the bed. One morning he hits it so hard that its contents rattle musically.  
  
He curses, but halts his progress. Curiously, he lifts the lid.  
  
The early sun glitters across broken glass. Gingerly, he moves a handful of pieces to the side, exposing a daguerreotype plate — the Marines at the blind, Franklin’s head scuffed clean from the copper. Under another layer of shards lies a portrait of Graham Gore.  
  
An anatomical map of the the abdominal cavity is folded neatly against the back of the trunk.  
  
Francis takes a step back, to the table. There’s another chest there, tucked under its legs. Inside he finds texts on physiology, Latin, and marine life. He lifts a thick parcel of letters from its bottom, and a chapbook flutters to the ground.    
  
He bends to retrieve it, and thumbs through the pages. Cheap paper, notes scrawled in pencil. Words in Inuktitut, in English.  
  
Slowly, he sits on the bed. He looks around the tent, but it yields no clues — it’s clean and as comfortable as to be expected. He doesn’t know what to make of it, of these things carried from Edinburgh, from Greenhithe, over the sea, over the ice and rocks, then apparently abandoned.  
  
Maybe there’s another explanation. Maybe he wanted these references close at hand in case Francis’s condition worsened. Maybe it was a gesture meant in deference to his captain. Or maybe this tent was nearest to the place where he entered the camp, after dragging Francis from the killing field; maybe he was simply tired.  
  
Francis slips the chapbook under the mattress, and tries not to think on it any longer.  
  
—  
  
He announces his intention to catch up with Edward a few nights later. Doctor Goodsir and Lady Silence stare at him, then exchange a glance. He repeats it in her tongue for good measure.  
  
“Very well, Captain,” Goodsir demurs, scraping his bowl with his spoon. Tonight, their supper is fresh native berries gathered by Lady Silence, and a handful of stale biscuits — split three ways — foraged from a cigar-box found in Mr. Diggle’s things. It’s the best meal Francis has had in months, and he’s in good spirits.  
  
“He’ll be moving slowly, the men are ill. I’m sure we’ll make good time once I’ve regained my strength,” he continues.  
  
“Of course.”  
  
“It’s been, what, a week and a half? I doubt they’ve made more than fifty miles.”  
  
“Mm.”  
  
Francis has not been captain so long as to lose sight of when he’s being humored. No matter. He turns to Lady Silence.  
  
“ _You will come with us? South?_ ” he asks. Swallowing, she rests her bowl on her knee. She darts another glance to Goodsir before nodding.  
  
“ _Good. Very good_ ,” he says. It occurs to him that he has not yet asked how she came to be in their company again, but he finds he’s thankful for her presence. Feeling warm and full (and only somewhat sore), he takes up a pencil and begins to jot notes -- a packing list, checks to carry out before they depart camp. Briefly, he wonders if they might return to the place where Mr. Hickey and his men lie —  to tidy the remains, so that anyone that comes upon them should know they were not abandoned —  and he turns to Goodsir, but the doctor has already stepped from the tent. His eyes fall on Lady Silence. She’s on the rug, bent over her bag, boxes lined up before her, sorting through items she has scavenged. This has become her nightly routine; she appears to be picking her way through the camp, searching for things to trade or repurpose. Most, she seems to recognize, but there are a few objects that are evidently outside her experience. These get set to the side, and brought to Francis.  
  
Why, exactly, he’s been selected to serve as an interpreter for these things remains a mystery to Francis. He can hardly imagine the doctor refusing to oblige her.  It seems more likely that he simply lacks the necessary vocabulary — Francis remembers tea in the great cabin, Goodsir’s talk of their cultural exchange. Tools, garments, the ice; perhaps they never made it to more complicated concepts. Though Francis is far from fluent himself, there’s something to be said for the challenge. It forces him to look carefully at the things she brings him, as a scientist or scholar might. He turns them in his hands and sees artifacts from a distant place, already three years past.  
  
Tonight, when she sidles up to him, her box is small. She unfolds a scrap of oilskin, and in its center, places a portrait, the size and shape of a farthing: in the lamplight, Francis can make out a sweet face, dark curls with ribbons. Around this unknown girl and her shy smile, Lady Silence places a broken pocket watch, a lady’s glove, a pocket hymnal, a flattened coin, and a knob of scrimshawed ivory. The items form rough circle, like the beginning of a snow-house; like a witch’s ritual. A spell to summon ghosts. Lady Silence gazes at him steadily, seriously, before gathering the corners of the oilskin and placing the strange bundle on his lap.  
  
He looks down. His hands hover, hesitant. He doesn’t know what attracted her to these things, nor how to explain them.  
  
“ _These — they are no good for trade_ ,” he says, shaking his head, a thickness in his throat. Sliding his hands under the oilskin, he scoops up the parcel, and turns to Lady Silence.  
  
Lady Silence shakes her head. She pushes his hands back. He stares at her, so she pushes again, firmly. _For you._  
  
He opens his mouth. He closes it. She raises her eyebrows: a question. But he shakes his head, unable to meet her eyes, to touch the dead men’s things that rest in his lap.

“ _Thank you_ ,” he says. Carefully, he folds up the bundle.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Just a heads up/CW that Francis does refer to "Esquimaux" through this chapter.)

“I would prefer if you not call me doctor,” Goodsir says one afternoon as he helps Francis back into bed. It’s a mild day, and they’ve just taken a turn around the camp, arm in arm like sweethearts. He’d been grateful Goodsir seemed oblivious to the absurdity of the picture they made, and murmured _thank you, doctor_ as they returned to the tent.  
  
The request catches Francis off-guard. He swivels to face Goodsir, trying to discern what this request signifies. He doesn’t appear to be angry, or upset. In fact, he seems entirely without emotion.  
  
“What would you have me call you, then?” Francis says, and immediately regrets it. It sounds sour, argumentative. Goodsir glances up, then returns to smoothing a blanket over Francis.  
  
“Mr. Goodsir will do,” he says quietly.  
  
“Alright,” Francis agrees, and then, before he can stop himself: “Why?”  
  
Goodsir looks at him directly.  
  
“Surgeons aren’t entitled to be called doctor,”  he says, holding Francis’s gaze. Absently, he scratches at a scab on his knuckle, then looks down at the blood that wells up, as if surprised by this outcome. ”Besides, I never finished my studies.”  
  
The man is a terrible liar.  
  
—  
  
It’s getting harder to ignore that there’s something unmoored in Goodsir.  
  
Francis has come to expect detachment in his medical men: Stanley was exemplar in this regard, but even McDonald had smiled, unruffled, as Francis spewed hot bile across his knees. Goodsir’s indifference, however, seems to be of an entirely different character, at odds with his nature. In the matter of his duties, he is thoroughly attentive. But when the task at hand is outside of his expertise, there comes over him a stillness, a certain … vacancy. His gaze goes glassy when Francis discusses his plans to catch up with Edward; he seems strangely impassive to any talk of returning home.  It’s as if the person behind his eyes has taken a step sideways, and slipped unnoticed from the stage.  
  
It may very well be a symptom of the Scurvy, or the tins — or melancholy, or the minor concussion Goodsir mentioned once, in passing. Francis is no doctor; then again, neither, evidently, is Goodsir.  
  
“What happened?” he asks one evening.  
  
“What happened when?” Goodsir lowers his book.  
  
They’ve been discussing the camp and its contents in a desultory manner since they put their supper bowls aside, a lazily paced conversation that stops and starts and conveniently avoids the matter of how they both came to be here. The question seems natural enough, in that context.  
  
But Francis realizes what he meant to ask was: _what happened to you._  
  
“When I was brought here, to this camp,” he asks instead. Goodsir reaches for his temple, as if to pull off a pair of spectacles, then catches himself. He sets his book aside.  
  
“I tended to you as best I could,” he says, his tone uncertain. He exchanges a glance with Lady Silence: her eyes are dark and liquid in the lamplight.  
  
“I remember. What happened, after that?”  
  
“I wanted you to help you run, but you could barely stand upright. I thought you needed time to heal.” He presses his lips together; Francis senses an ellipsis here, the edge of something omitted. “I tried to make you as comfortable as possible … but they sighted the creature, and Mr. Hickey gave orders to intercept it.”  
  
Francis leans forward.  
  
“And before that, Mr. Goodsir?”  
  
Goodsir catches his meaning at once. For moment, Francis thinks he will avoid the question altogether. His fingers slip into a breast pocket, close on something, and emerge. He fidgets with it. Then he begins to speak.  
  
His story lacks the broad strokes of a history — he was never in any position of power, nor granted any insight into Mr. Hickey’s plans. By his account, he’d been all but press-ganged into service, driven from his tent and forced to watch as his things were loaded onto the sledge. There had followed some weeks of hauling in which he carried a limited awareness of Francis’s own movements, though no interest in running. (He gazes down at his fist as he says this, his expression unreadable.) Francis has a sense of him withdrawing into himself in those weeks; his recollections seem vague, unfocused. When Francis asks if his party ever retrieved the cache he left for them at Terror Camp, he tips his head to one side.  
  
“It didn’t matter,” he says flatly.  
  
“Why’s that?” Francis asks.  
  
“Mr. Hickey murdered Mr. Gibson around that time. The men had fresh meat.”  
  
Francis is taken aback. It feels like it’s been lurking under his awareness like a submerged berg — its outline faintly visible, simply waiting for him to brush against it. That Mr. Hickey would be capable of such an act comes as no surprise, but it’s a profound failure of his own captaincy that other men were enticed — or induced — to participate.  
  
He watches Goodsir turn a small ring between his fingers, and suddenly perceives the nature of his crisis.  
  
“No one would blame you for partaking,” Francis says.  
  
There’s a long pause as Goodsir presses the face of the ring against his thumb. The skin goes white.  
  
“I flayed Mr. Gibson’s body and trimmed the flesh from his bones,” he replies.  
  
“Oh,” Francis says.  
  
_Oh._  
  
Francis studies him. It’s undeniable that he’s changed. He’s harder to read; his enthusiasms no longer percolate just below the surface. He looks older. And yet — this is a man who often feigns a full belly so that Francis may have half a serving more of seal meat. The same man who stood at his shoulder they prepared to leave the site of Mr. Hickey’s massacre of the Esquimaux, and asked if they might linger awhile longer, to turn the bodies east.  
  
“No doubt your hand was forced,” he says, with conviction, and Goodsir — recoils. His eyebrows furrow; his fingers curl around the ring. Tucking it into his waistcoat, he abruptly pushes himself up and storms from the tent.  
  
Lady Silence watches him go. She turns to Francis. His shoulders sag. “Go on, then,” he sighs.  
  
She stares at Francis for a long time, but she doesn’t move from her place on the rug.  
  
—  
  
Goodsir keeps to himself for a few days after that. He appears at his customary hours to poke and prod Francis, but his voice is clipped, and there is no idle talk. He doesn't linger after supper.  
  
Given his own experience with ill humors, Francis knows it can be best to let them work through one’s system. He’s content to ignore the lapse in Goodsir’s manners; heaven knows Goodsir has weathered his share of Francis’s moods without remark.  
  
He finds he misses the man’s presence, though.  
  
Francis has always considered himself an incorrigible misanthrope; it’s strange to arrive at this late phase of life only to have that assumption challenged. It’s probably James’s fault, he thinks fondly, with a pang, as he picks his way over the rocks. It would be fittingly ironic that James Fitzjames would succeed in rendering him appreciative of company, out here in the lonely ass-end of the world.  
  
“ _Where’s Goodsir?_ ” he’d asked Lady Silence earlier, after peering into various unoccupied tents. She’d looked up from the hide she was flensing and jerked her head to some distance beyond the camp.  
  
“ _Far?_ ” he’d asked, leaning on a tent pole he’d requisitioned for his walk. She rolled her shoulders, eloquently.  
  
So he’d set off. He’d had no particular goal in mind. If he got tired, he’d turn back; if he came upon Goodsir, he thought he might prevail upon him to sit awhile in his company. At first he’d felt dejected by Goodsir’s abrupt departure, then indignant, but as he turned the conversation back in forth in his mind, a possibility occurred to him: perhaps his reassurance was unwelcome. Perhaps he’d merely been pompous, dismissive. It wouldn’t unprecedented for a commander on this expedition.  
  
He resolves to make amends, if need be. And if Goodsir needs to unburden himself, he’ll listen. They’ve got at least fifty miles between them and Edward — there’s plenty of time.  
  
Clutching his side, he crests a gentle rise and comes upon Goodsir, some twenty feet distant. There’s a pile of rocks at his side, and a small sledge, its contents shrouded under a tarpaulin. Francis pants, squinting at the shape, then at Goodsir in his shirt-sleeves, up to his shins in a shallow hole: is he burying the men after all?  
  
Goodsir turns, dropping his spade with a clatter. He lopes over to where Francis stands, his hand going up to Francis’s forehead.  
  
“What’s wrong?” he asks, brow furrowing. Without waiting for an answer, he nudges Francis’s head to the side, fingers pressing along the line of his neck. Francis’s instinct is to bat him away, but he forces himself to tolerate the examination.  
  
“I’m well,” he huffs. “Perfectly well, actually. The walk was invigorating.” Goodsir steps back, folding his good hand over the sling at his sternum. He looks skeptical, but respectfully so. With a little snort, Francis eyes the sledge over his shoulder. “What on earth are you doing out here, Mr. Goodsir?”  
  
“I, uh —“ He turns, then looks sheepish. Crossing the short distance to the sledge, he lifts one corner of the tarpaulin.    
  
Francis blinks and comes closer.  
  
“The provisions?” The shapes are indistinct yet uniform in the shadows cast by the midday sun. He feels a bit stupefied; he had braced himself for viscera, not Goldner’s tinned beef.     
  
“I thought … since Lady Silence has been so kind as to share the bounty of her hunts … since we appear to be much recovered thanks to her generosity … ” Goodsir rubs his thumb over the knuckles of his injured hand as he seems to work up to courage to meet Francis’s eye. “I should have asked permission before taking them. I apologize. Sir.”  
  
Francis frowns at the shallow hole. He has an inkling of its purpose, but … Goodsir is covered in sweat and fine dust, his hair wild. He doesn’t look like a man with a coherent plan.  
  
“That doesn’t explain what you’re doing,” Francis says, as gently as he can manage.  
  
“Ah. Well. I left the other goods — what remains of the tea, the chocolate — for us to take with us. And I thought we could return to these, if our circumstances became desperate. But I worried that if we left these out in the open, Lady Silence’s people might find them, and I don’t want …” Goodsir’s gaze drifts away, and he shakes his head. “Not after what happened to us.”  
  
After what happened, indeed. He thinks of the smell of the sick beds. James’s hand in his. A black whirlpool of memory, forever tugging at the edge of his consciousness. Francis breaks free of it, with effort. He clears his throat.  
  
“Alright,” he says.  
  
“Alright?” Goodsir looks up at him, curiously.  
  
“It’s a good plan,” Francis clarifies. His gaze falls on the spade. “You were digging with one hand?”  
  
Goodsir shrugs. “It was slow,” he concedes.    
  
Ignoring the sharp spike of pain in his middle, Francis bends to take up the spade. “Let me help you,” he says.  
  
“Absolutely not.” Goodsir reaches for the handle. Francis yanks it from his grasp. He draws himself up to his full height.  
  
“Allow me to rephrase: I _am_ helping you.”  
  
“You’re in no condition to have walked out here in the first place.” Goodsir’s tone is stubbornly serious, and when he makes to grab the spade again, Francis feels a prickle of real annoyance.  
  
“I told you, the walk was invigorating.”  
  
“Don’t be ridiculous.”  
  
“Says the man digging a hole one-handed.”  
  
“Yes. Now give me the spade.” His voice has gone tight.  
  
“No.” Francis drives it hard into the earth, steel ringing in punctuation. Goodsir seizes it; Francis catches the neck, wrenching it back. There ensues a short struggle, but Goodsir suddenly relents, raising his hand in surrender.  
  
“Very well, take it. Dig. God willing, you’ll pull a hernia and we won’t be forced to go on a pointless march south to rendezvous with the corpses of our comrades, long dead of Scurvy if we’re lucky. Or they’ve consumed each other, and we’re not.”  
  
It hits him like a slap. He’s long suspected Goodsir is holding his tongue on the subject of going south, but to hear it confirmed with such bloodless antipathy —  
  
“I doubt the other men are capable of such savagery,” he snaps.  
  
Goodsir flinches, eyes wide. Then, all at once, a laugh bursts from him. It’s a queer, strained noise, bouncing off the hills.  
  
He sinks down to perch on the edge of the sledge, shaking with mirth. “You’re right, you’re right,” he mutters when he catches his breath. He wipes his eyes, looking Francis up and down, then down at his own arm. “What fools we are, the both of us.”  
  
—  
  
Preparations continue, regardless.  
  
“What else can we do?” he’d asked Goodsir as they’d rested side by side on the sledge. The work had softened the edges of their quarrel; the tins were in the hole, awaiting burial. Goodsir took a long pull from the flask, his hair a dark blur in Francis’s peripheral vision. For a moment, Francis imagined James there.  
  
“I agree,” Goodsir said, finally.  
  
“Don’t humor me,” Francis grumbled.  
  
“No, it’s the only thing we can do.” He gave a half-smile; a twitch, really. “I admire your capacity for optimism.”  
  
Francis considers that phrase, later, as he packs the sledge. _I admire your capacity for optimism._ It sounds like a backhanded compliment, the sort of quip Sir John would have delivered with a knowing smirk. (Never mind that no one has ever accused him of an excess of optimism — Francis laughs aloud to himself at the notion.) But he suspects Goodsir meant it sincerely. Part of him wonders what happened to Goodsir, here, to have hope burned clean from his soul.  
  
Part of him knows it isn’t optimism. _What else can we do?_ has become a mantra of sorts, the dead end to every branching path his mind is capable of putting before him. Goodsir is right: in all likelihood, the march south has sputtered to a stop, and most of the men have succumbed to their privations. Some have probably wandered off into the wilderness, as John Bridgens did.  
  
But if the Esquimaux have come to their aid —  
  
If they’ve found game —  
  
If he can save five, ten —  
  
Francis carries so many regrets. He doesn’t think he can bear the weight of not trying, too.  
  
—  
  
The morning they break camp dawns crisp and clear. Francis wakes to discover a thin sheet of ice across the cup of water beside his bed. He presses a finger against it until it shatters, watching the impromptu floe bob against the tin.  
  
He thinks of Thomas, then, and his other Thomas later as he works soap into a lather, brushing it over nearly three weeks’ worth of neglected beard; Francis has tried to temper his expectations, but in the matter of Thomas Jopson, he allows himself the indulgence of wild, irrational hope. He has seen men come back from the brink with Scurvy before.   
  
Lady Silence and Goodsir duck into the tent, the sky pink and new behind them. He wipes the razor clean and turns to them: Lady Silence is attired in her traveling parka, while Goodsir is wearing a Welsh wig and his great coat, unbuttoned. They seem to be waiting for something. For _him_ , he realizes.  
  
He’s forgotten what it is to command, these past weeks. He looks to each of them, and his eye catches on Goodsir’s tie, lying loose at under his sling.  
  
“Come, now,” he says in a sudden rush of fondness to Goodsir, waving him over. He hasn’t seen the man wear a tie since he woke up in this camp; suddenly it’s clear why.  
  
“I can manage,” he protests as Francis takes hold of the ends.  
  
“I can do better,” Francis counters. Goodsir makes a noise at this, and shifts uncomfortably, but lifts his chin. His beard brushes Francis’s fingers, coarse and curling at the ends. This close, he smells warm and alive, in a way that so little in this place does.  
  
Francis pulls the knot tight, and inhales deeply. He’s accustomed being handled by Goodsir, the candor of his touch, and yet — for the first time, he feels aware of Goodsir himself, the physicality of his body, the fragility and vitality of it. Tucking the ends of the tie under the collar of Goodsir’s waistcoat, he absently rests his hand there for a moment.  
  
Goodsir sways under the slight pressure, his eyes slipping shut.  
  
“Steady,” Francis murmurs. Goodsir swallows, nodding, and withdraws. When he opens his eyes again, he’s a long time blinking them back into focus.  
  
When he turns to Lady Silence, Francis has the uncanny sense of having been caught out at something.  
  
“Shall we?” he says, willing himself not to color.  



End file.
